


Gnomon

by fromward (from)



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Arthurian, Author's Favorite, Canon Era, Drama, F/M, Future Fic, Immortality, Imperialism, Loneliness, M/M, Modern Era, Pining, author loves history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-06
Updated: 2009-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:57:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/fromward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>finding Arthur would mean being struck alight again, as a gnomon would, to tell the world the time</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gnomon

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: S1 (and messianic veins of Arthurian legend)  
> Disclaimer: _Merlin_ belongs to **Shine** and the **BBC**  
> Acknowledgements: A huge thank you ♥ to Beet, Signe, Garryowen, and Mahaliem for their time, energy and support. All mistakes are mine alone.

  


  


  


'I still look the same,' is the first thing he says one morning.

She doesn't reply, but he knows she's no longer asleep, no longer lost in dreams that come with her broken shuddering – like a peregrine's burdened by its prey in midair.

'It's been years and I still look the same,' he says, turning to look at her.

He finds nothing in her eyes, but he hears her say in a voice still far from wakefulness: 'Because Arthur does, too.'

'And when he returns from Avalon?'

'If he is returned from Avalon,' she corrects him, her naked body turning toward his, pulling and pushing the sheet they're lying under into folds. 'If you ever find a way to bring him back,' she says, a lone finger trailing from his shoulder down along his arm, 'you can grow old together.'

'Two sides of the same coin and all that,' Merlin mumbles, smiling.

Nimueh is smiling, too; there is precious little he hasn't told her, there has been too much time to pass. "And all that,' she echoes.

He can hear the river rushing by in the distance, and the rain washing summer down. He closes his eyes, feels the press of Nimueh's body against his, and wonders if it was the truth when Arthur said he would always be forgiven, no matter what.

  


  


  
*  


  


  


  


Their days and decades are made up of habits, not rules. It makes sense for two people who aren't very good at following orders. He doesn't ask her to stop venturing into caves for days on end, she doesn't ask him to stop thinking about Arthur, and they have their fill of blackberry wine. He plants crops and goes fishing to provide his share of their food because even after all this time, he is still useless at setting traps. He's not much better at fishing than he is at hunting, but he finds pleasure in watching the slow drift of water through the river as it seeks the sea. He busies himself with life. And, despite opinions to the contrary, he doesn't _always_ think about Arthur.

On damp spring mornings, he ventures through the mist to collect herbs for their stocks and early strawberries for the table. She joins him on occasion, and throws jibes when he makes a detour to the bogs to pull up a few common reeds to snack on. The young shoots are sweet, but she prefers to use magic to bring food from the house instead. He calls her lazy even though he's done it often enough himself, in the old days – when Arthur left him alone with the day's catch and he'd burn it without meaning to, or when returning to the castle for a meal was not a good idea considering the state they were in. Arthur didn't consider the raw shoots fit for his mouth either. Merlin thinks Nimueh and Arthur could start on this commonality one day, despite all that has never mended.

He remembers Arthur's fit of rage when he saw her standing in the clearing, looking not a day older than she had been when she'd died. He remembers how Arthur stalked back to the castle, Nimueh smiling as she waited for Merlin to return. And she waited for hours, for days. She was good at biding her time.

'I cannot believe that you brought her back to life,' Arthur said from the round table as soon as the doors had closed behind the last of the men to leave the hall. Theirs would be a private meeting; even in anger, Arthur always gave more than Merlin asked of him, when he was ready to do it.

Merlin had expected Nimueh to be an unwelcome gift from his journey to the Isle of the Blessed, but if she proved her worth, she would be an invaluable one as well. He would make Arthur understand that.

'We need her,' Merlin said, approaching him in long strides. The table was littered with plans and lists of precious resources the kingdom still had at its disposal. He could see he didn't need to remind Arthur of Morgana and Mordred's march toward Camelot and the alliances that shifted in their wake, alliances Arthur had given blood and pride to build. 'I can't do this by myself.'

'Well, you're not supposed to do anything by yourself!' Arthur said, his hair caught in a gleam of firelight as he stood up. 'What do you think I'm for?'

'Being understanding, compassionate and open to new ideas no matter how crazy they might seem at first?'

Arthur's mouth twitched. 'Damn it, Merlin,' he finally said. 'You should have come to me first.'

'I know,' Merlin admitted. 'And Arthur, I am sorry about that, but the old magic has its rules and there wasn't time for deliberations.'

'There's always time for thinking ahead.'

'Then think about this: Morgana is more powerful than I've ever imagined she could be. And if you hesitate for just—'

'I won't hesitate. I know my duty, Merlin. I know what I have to do.'

Merlin saw the steely determination in Arthur's eyes, thought it more like Morgana's than Uther's, and knew then that he had made the choice he could live with. 'Be that as it may, there are some things that you can't do.'

Arthur turned his head sharply, regarding Merlin with apparent discontent. 'And it seems, the same goes for you,' Arthur said, and there was hurt in it, which took Merlin by surprise. 'So what is she, Merlin?' he asked. 'What is Nimueh? Your assassin?'

Merlin laughed. 'Am I yours?'

Arthur turned away toward the windows and the brightness outside. 'Of course not, you fool.'

When Merlin left the great hall, Gwen was waiting in the corridor, looking as if she'd been there for some time. He wasn't sure how much she'd heard, but Arthur kept no secrets from his queen, and Merlin always tried to follow suit. Gwen wouldn't want Morgana's blood on their hands either, or on Lancelot's. Of that he was certain.

'Could've gone better,' he said, shrugging.

'It's enough.'

'Or too much,' he exhaled, away from the steely faces of the guards at the doors. 'I haven't quite figured that one out yet.'

They walked together in silence toward the stairwell and just when he thought they would part without another word, she took his arm. 'We do what we can, Merlin,' she said. 'Because we love him.'

He remembers smiling at her, and she returning the gesture, because they were so used to being kind to each other.

Nimueh is neither sweet nor kind, and he doesn't trust her to have his interests at heart, but she knows him. It is the greatest comfort he thinks he can find.

He is, as Gaius never minded pointing out, terrible at thinking things through.

Early July and he is spelling his memories to reveal themselves on the wall when Nimueh comes into the bow room. 'Let him rest, Merlin,' she says, hardly looking at the moving figures and the lush green of Ealdor as she drifts by, readying to leave for the day. He never asks her where she goes lately, dressed in a manner too striking for any other company except high nobility. It's probably unwise of him, but what matters is, she's not going where he wants to go. 'There are other kings still to come.'

There are no other kings but Arthur, his mouth moves to say, but he's not about to admit what he's up to. 'I'm just looking for my mother,' he shouts after her, making the images disappear with the wave of his hand.

'I didn't know she rode a white horse and called herself Arthur.'

She knows him, and maybe he's just glad there's someone who still does.

  


  


  
*  


  


  


  


  


Since the Battle of Camlann, Merlin has been the sole visitor on the Isle of the Blessed. He doesn't invite Nimueh, having been on the receiving end of the suspicion it raises in her. He doubts she'd enjoy the journey since he undertakes it on foot, partly because it gives him time to rest his mind and partly to use his whole body to gauge the magic in the surrounding lands. Its strength is receding from disuse and he has a mind to seal the place, to channel its energy into a loop of some kind.

A light drizzle begins to fall when he's been there for a greater part of the week, playing with channelling spells that might serve the purposes of a seal without causing surges and potentially upsetting the balance of life and death. There's that concern, of course, and a thought that came to him just yesterday. He thinks the energy of the Isle, once directed into a single stream but before it is looped, could help him locate other magical power concentrations. A place like Avalon, for example. And as Gaius would say, 'It's an intriguing line of inquiry.'

He can hardly feel the rainwater on his skin and keeps at his work, linking spells with one another in the air, until he senses the presence of another's magic on the grounds.

He safeguards the spells but stops short of dismantling them. It can only be Nimueh.

She takes the steps as if she knows all their crooked seams and moss traps. She probably does, Merlin thinks, even though she has not been the Isle's priestess for a few hundred years. It lives and breathes alongside him now, like a shade of the sky he can always make out above, and that sort of bond never disappears.

For the past few months, Nimueh has been going on and on about something called 'parliament' and he half-expects her to launch into another discussion of it, but what she says, face pallid, is: 'You've started looking for him.'

Merlin wavers before stepping back from the central altar, hating that she is right.

'There's no harm in it,' he finally says.

'I've had no portents about the end of days,' she says, as if his answer doesn't warrant acknowledgment.

He smiles. 'Well, that's always good news,' he says, spelling smooth a bit of rock for her to sit on.

She doesn't take the seat. 'Then why are you searching for him?'

'It can't hurt to be prepared, can it,' he says.

'You intend to change destiny just so you can see him again.'

'You said it yourself,' he reminds her. 'It's not certain that I can bring him back from Avalon. Shouldn't I at least make sure that I can before, you know, the apocalypse is nigh?'

She laughs. 'Do you mean to tell me that if you find a way to bring him back, you won't do it then and there?'

'Why would I?' he asks, fiddling with the pattern of channelling spells. 'We all know what playing with destiny can do.'

'Indeed,' Nimueh says in the deadly way he has not heard since Camlann; or perhaps even before, when Gwen and Lancelot sealed the kingdom's fate and Arthur, in one of his cataclysmic strops, called Nimueh the unnatural result of Merlin's foolish game with destiny and its bane on Camelot.

He looks up at the memory and sees her eyes glittering with anger. 'That's not what I meant!' he says.

The sky darkens and Merlin steels himself, hoping she remembers that the last time she started a fight on these grounds, one of them ended up dead.

She regards him, a pained smile breaking on her face. 'You think too little of me, Merlin,' she says before disappearing in a whirlwind that gathers rainwater before collapsing to shoot it in all directions.

He stands there, soaked, wondering why she always insists on having the last word.

  


  


  
*  


  


  


  


  


'Do you know, Merlin,' she says to him one evening, 'I've yet to find living with a man pleasurable.'

'I liked living with Arthur,' he replies, realising his mistake much too late. In his defence, scrying with a floral washbasin does take an inordinate amount of concentration.

  


  


  
*  


  


  


  


  


It is, since their inevitable parting of ways, Merlin's first visit to Nimueh's house – or rather, a phantom patriarch's, the property laws being what they are. He should have come sooner, he knows, even if only to say hello, but he has his work to do. Looking for long lost treasure, Nimueh teases to amuse her set, and of course all of it is true. Bitterly so.

An array of servants tends the house and he finds his stay comfortable, much more comfortable than the sort of living he's been haphazardly keeping up along the northwest tarns for the past few years. And except for the timbering on the ceiling, there is something familiar in the décor of Nimueh's private rooms.

One warm afternoon, it comes to him. He recalls the heavy curtains, near identical, lining the locked set of chambers in one of Camelot's towers, where he and Arthur discovered the cursed thimble in the final year of Uther's reign.

The fireplaces roared there in the depths of winter, and as they were to find, even through the summer. 'Strange how I feel rude lying here thinking that I'm glad she's dead,' Arthur said, naked on the floor with Merlin in his arms, only days before he would become king, though they didn't know it at the time.

If Arthur were dead, Merlin could bring him back to life the way he did Nimueh. But Arthur is elsewhere and there is no way Merlin can bring him back to the land of the living, unless Avalon is found. Even the water nymphs who thought the king too fair for death and delivered him from Camlann to the isle as he lay dying do not know where it lies now that it bears his body, or where it chooses to appear from year to year, at Samhain and only then.

Nimueh leaves the tall windows and sits by him, putting a hand over his, a knowing smile on her lips. It is one of the things he cherishes about her: the understanding that comes without an ounce of pity.

'I cannot decide between Mary and Elizabeth,' Nimueh says, speaking of the two queens as if she were an intimate of them both. Merlin would not be surprised if she were.

'There's time yet,' he says, perhaps only because time is all he can think of these days.

'Is there? Then it is not on Elizabeth's side.' The heavy velvet of her gown brushes his thigh when she turns to him. 'Remember, Merlin, it was not only war that brought down Camelot,' she says.

Merlin looks away, unhappy at the thought of another argument, of what he can already identify as the next spoke on their ever spinning wheel of quarrels and reconciliations. 'Since when do you care about Camelot?'

'There are always lessons to be learned.'

He grins. 'Well, they're not mine to learn. I'm not anyone's counsellor, not anymore.'

'You should have given Arthur a child,' she tells him, and perhaps there is something she wants, some kind of conflict within these walls to prepare her for something larger out there.

'What,' he says, willing to let it go, to play it like a game, 'like the one you gave Uther in exchange for his wife?'

She leans in, conspiratorial, and looking into her blue, laughing eyes, Merlin thinks he's made the right choice. 'Igraine might have been the love of Uther's life, but Guinevere never was Arthur's,' she says.

He should have learnt by now that games with Nimueh are never fair. He feels a sudden, unconquerable thirst, but all he can grasp is the thought of bliss and not the thing itself, and he has to say, 'But she was Lancelot's.'

'That has always been your problem, Merlin,' Nimueh says, her hand quick to disappear as she gets up. 'You love too many, and never enough.'

Her words should hurt much more than they do, but he remembers all those moments when Arthur would say, eyes trained at his kingdom below: 'I know you love me, Merlin. I do.'

It is as if she can read his mind. 'Find him, Merlin. Find the good King Arthur if you can and ask him for the truth. Perhaps then he will tell you what only I have had the courage to say,' she adds, when really, she should have held her tongue.

If there had been a truth to tell, Arthur would have told him. And if Avalon is for Merlin to find, he will find it. He wants to say all of this, he wants Nimueh to know what he thinks of her version of a history she was not even part of, but the words do not come.

Merlin feels the air vanishing from the room, and perhaps that is exactly what happens; he has always been too powerful for his own good. The candles go out. Nimueh is gasping, and Merlin leaves.

The next time he sees her, London is burning to the ground.

  


  


  
*  


  


  


  


They are doing all they can, but parts of the city will not stop burning. Whispers of French sorcery travel through the streets though there is no evidence of it save for the mangled bodies of the accused. It is as if Uther has returned from the dead.

He walks through the narrowness of night and crosses the path of firebreaks, his nose wrinkling at the stench of gunpowder. He has had enough of soldiers from the Tower's garrison shouting, 'God save the King!' before another blast fills the air, but he knows they and their cause are not his to meddle with.

He finds Nimueh to the west. There are pools of molten lead by her feet from the roofs of St. Paul's and yet she is smiling, one-shoed down a cobbled lane. He wonders if her magic has grown stronger like his, if its human vessel has hardened to match the grip of time.

'I hope this isn't your doing,' he says. The cathedral's stones are exploding from the heat and he could barely hear himself, but from the way her eyes sharpen, he knows she has.

'It's frightfully more fun than the plague.'

She is goading him, just like – his mind stutters over images of fire and the slain – just like Morgana would whenever Uther and Arthur were away and the day needed some excitement. They did so much magic, which he'd never done with anyone else before she'd come along, that it's a wonder they were never caught.

'I'm glad you're alive,' he tells Nimueh and means it.

He whisks her away, or perhaps she him, to the riverbank. Over her shoulder, he can see the Palace of Whitehall, where the flag still flies despite the odds. He kisses her, ash on his lips.

'You are still searching for him,' she says when they finally break apart.

'I must. I—'

He does not see her again for a very long time.

  


  
*  


  


  


  


  


All across the Strait, the sky is blood red. Crowds gather and grow frantic, their sharp jostling elbows cutting life in towns and cities down to its seams as they hurry for news and signs and, in the swelling hours of night that won't turn to day, for prophecies.

Merlin is eager to escape to the seas, but no one is sailing tonight and the constabulary are patrolling the docks. He has no papers for them to check and wanting to be on the water is not reason enough to spell people's minds to forget. He resorts to magicking a raft and drifts further and further away, until the lights of the bay disappear and there's only a vast nothingness, black and crimson as the folds of flesh of a mortally wounded colossus.

As long as he doesn't fall asleep, it'll be just fine.

'Famous last words,' he can hear Arthur say in a raspy voice.

Merlin wipes his face and turns onto his side.

He doesn't know how long he's been lying there, watching the water break and coalesce into trapezoids of glass, when the raft is jostled into a shudder.

He sits up in a flash, heart pounding.

Nimueh is sitting on the far edge, legs awash. Her hair is pinned high and there is a mark where the clasp of a necklace must have sat on her neck.

'Before you say anything, Arthur is still in Avalon. I haven't brought this upon us or anything like that.'

'I know,' she says, looking out into the sea.

'It's a volcano in the Far East that's caused all this.'

'I know.'

He folds his legs and wraps his arms around them, unsure of what else to say. 'Then why are you here?'

'I wanted to see you.'

'You could've—'

'I wanted to see you in the flesh, Merlin,' she says, cutting him off. 'Surely you know the difference,' she adds, swinging her legs up and splashing his feet in the process. Her toes are cool against his.

'Isn't that uncalled for?' he says, not really minding. There are parts of him that will always be open to her and he'd be completely lost without them.

They drift in silence for a while, but she's not the kind to sit still for very long. Her toes tap once, twice, and then curl back before easing into another tap without a discernible rhythm. He gives her a gentle kick that ends up being more like a side slap, and she smiles, almost blindingly beautiful.

He looks away in surprise and presses one cheek against his knee.

'You know, Merlin, you've never once asked me to help you find him.'

He thinks she should be better at small talk than this. Looking up, he says, 'I've already asked too much of you.'

Nimueh shakes her head, but she says: 'Yes. You probably have.'

The moon is blue and his world is without summers for the next two years, the sky streaked silver as if cracked under the weight of what it no longer wants to bear. He goes where there is famine. He follows strife from a distance and pulls as many lives as he can to safety. He watches as people latch onto the idea of progress while others fall into its mire. Merlin doesn't wish this future on Arthur, but he thinks it would be easier if Arthur were here.

He wants to hear Arthur say, 'This is the fun part, Merlin. It's what destiny's all about.'

  


  


  
*  


  


  


  


The Diamond Jubilee procession is underway. Long terraced benches top the scaffolding that lines the route. It sways slightly under the crowds lucky enough to have found a seat above, but not to the notice of those standing below. Pushing his way through, and unable to keep himself from stopping to look, Merlin marvels at the sight of the Indian cavalry in their splendour. They seem the kind of men Arthur would be proud to ride with.

Her Majesty is getting on in years, but her subjects can still feel her power, basking in it as they revel in the sun. He remembers the celebrations in Camelot, the love they all had for Arthur. He wishes his king were here if only to see the people smile, to laugh with them, and later tonight, to come home to him.

Half-drunk with excitement, he blurts all of his thoughts out to Nimueh when he meets her in Hyde Park before remembering that it's an incredibly stupid thing to do. He waits in silence for her to make fun of him, to utter a scathing remark or two.

She throws him a magnanimous smile instead and asks him about his travels in the past hundred years.

  


  
*  


  


  


  


A half hour in Nimueh's home off the park and the bittersweet ache for Arthur that has bloomed for weeks after the jubilee celebrations quickly dissipates, replaced by a keening that frightens even the oldest parts of his self.

'See it as a blessing, Merlin. You know my value. You always have. And together, we will find him.'

He stops himself from pacing the breadth of the room and says: 'No.'

'No,' he repeats before she can reply. 'Arthur wouldn't want this.'

'Oh, no?' She leans back from the table and he sees how intricate the maps are, how they were made not only for knowing what is already there but for imagining what will be.

'No.'

'An empire where the sun never sets. An empire that will unite the world so it may live in peace, with freedom and justice for all mankind,' she says, regarding him with a cool look on her face. 'Arthur would not want that? Not even with you by his side?'

Merlin knows what the answers are. He knows she knows them too. The despair he feels is frighteningly familiar. He has stood like this before, shoulders laden with debts to be paid for lives taken and shackled in the name of a common good.

'It's not what I want,' he says, trembling to keep his emotions in check.

'On the contrary, Merlin, it is exactly what you want. You want to see Arthur ride at the head of a glorious imperial cavalcade. You'd like to know that millions of obedient subjects will gladly lay their lives down for him.' He wants to believe she is only doing this out of spite, that she's only throwing his words back at him, twisted and stained, because she finds it amusing. 'Such service and devotion has its price. I'm sure you're well aware of it, and will enjoy it yourself when he comes home to you as I once saw him do, night after night after night.'

He streaks across her precious carpets without thinking of it, the acrid smell of their fibres rising in his wake as he hears himself shout: 'If it weren't for us, you'd still be dead!'

She laughs, her hands spreading across the parcelled breadths of an earth without an axis like Arthur was once to Camelot, to him. 'I think the exact quote is, 'Merlin, I thought you told me she was dead.''

The room quakes in a roar of magic and when he regains control of himself, everything except what lies on her table of war is in tatters.

She is breathing hard and a trickle of blood escapes from her mouth. For a moment – and for what has passed between them – Merlin is sorry, so very sorry.

'Let me,' he says, approaching over splintered ebony, over chairs battered and broken.

She draws back and out of his reach. 'No matter,' she says, pulling a handkerchief from the sleeve of her riding coat. 'When Arthur is found, the choice will be his to make.'

  


  
*  


  


  


He is lonely, and she never lets him forget it.

  


  


  
*  


  


  


  


  


He drifts in and out of the world wars and all the rhythmic civil conflicts in between, remembering the worst of his years with Arthur and the many faces of death that he won't ever be a merchant of again, no matter what Nimueh thinks.

Irony, he thinks, is more powerful than a warlock. A chance encounter in the carnage, a hand over the mind of a soldier to help his passing, leads him closer to Avalon.

Off Trégastel, where those who manned the now-abandoned observation posts had to stare all day and night at the sea, are islands that promise him answers. One Samhain, Avalon will appear, with Arthur's body and Arthur's life renewed.

The rocky shores of an isle come into view and for a moment, tricked by the light, Merlin thinks Arthur is already awake. He is waiting, in that castle, for Merlin to find him. Hundreds of years have passed and now, above the flesh pink coastline, Arthur has built himself a home to wait in. But no, that's not Arthur. Arthur wouldn't wait, not if he's still the same person Merlin knew.

Merlin is struck by the realisation that he's expecting Arthur to be unchanged when he himself is not. He expects all the things Arthur was to him, and all the forgiveness he was promised in another lifetime. It's almost laughable.

'What's the matter?' A little girl asks in standard French, standing on tiptoe so she can put her chin over the painted blue bar that runs along the prow. She looks no older than ten. Her black hair is clipped tight, but the wind catches what it can and there is a diaphanous halo around one side of her head.

She doesn't know. She can't possibly understand.

'I'm looking for my friend,' he replies.

'Over there?' she asks, pointing to the island while her sharp eyes peer into his.

'I don't know.'

'Well,' she says after a moment, 'everyone who lived in that big house died in the camps.'

She is still a child, he thinks. He should be telling her the story of a brave and handsome prince and all she should know about the house on the isle is that it looks somewhat like the castle in the tale, and someday, when all their trials are over, they will live happily ever after there. He swallows the thought, but it lodges itself harshly in his throat and his voice is hoarse when he asks, 'What do you know about it?'

The girl draws back, her small face twisting tight. 'If you don't know yourself then I have nothing to tell you,' she says in a monotone rush, as if reciting a line from memory when she knows she's missed the cue. The halo swivels as she turns to run up starboard side.

He leaves the northern coast of Brittany with no plans to return come Samhain.

He had always thought Arthur the sun, and then Nimueh the shadow cast from where he stood; and finding Arthur would mean being struck alight again, as a gnomon would, to tell the world the time. He hadn't grown up like that, wanting all that power. And it's been planed off him now, layer by layer, life by life.

  


  


  
*  


  


  


  


'People alive now will see the setting up of a base on the moon and the establishment of hotels in space. The only way is up, really.'

'How can we use the moon without spoiling it?'

Merlin eats his pudding quietly and waits for a chance to signal for another pint of ale, which he doesn't think will come anytime soon; everyone in the smoky pub is riveted to the small television screen above the bar. He puts his spoon down and leans back into the dark booth. It's then that hears someone calling his name, the disembodied voice causing him to flinch.

_Help us, Emrys. Please._

He rushes outside, shouting, 'Where are you?' A stunned passerby stares at him in mid-stride and he takes it as an opportunity to hit the pavement running.

_Help us, Emrys. Help us or we will surely perish._

'Where are you?' he asks again, frustrated. If the voice isn't already a giveaway, he would know that he's being called by a magical being of some sort because they're never specific about anything.

He turns into the first blind alley he sees and throws a spell between himself and the nearest unpainted wall to create a catch-all basin. 'Come on, give me something,' he mutters. 'Where are you?' If there are no directions to go on, he'll have to track back through time and that's the last thing he wants to do.

_Emrys, please help us!_

The voice falls into the basin and he hits it with a tracking spell before transporting himself with a set of fractal spells to follow it through time.

'—help us!'

He falls to the ground, breathing heavily. Even a short burst of travel like this takes too much out of him.

'Is that you, Merlin?'

Nimueh is standing on the edge of a cliff, her trench coat strapped tight against the wind. The Atlantic, he thinks, scanning the wide horizon. Over the breaking of waves against the rocks below, he can hear the voice that he's just tracked, and another, crying out.

He scrambles up to get to where Nimueh is and sees two water nymphs trapped in a jagged recess along the sheer granite outcrop, at least a hundred feet above the ocean. He hopes their sister is simply lucky not to have been caught. There's no telling what Nimueh is capable of doing.

'What the hell d'you think you're doing?' he asks her, furious.

Nimueh looks over her shoulder. 'You don't believe they told you the truth, do you?'

Merlin has no idea what she's talking about, but he senses he should be on the nymphs' side in this argument since Nimueh so obviously has the upper hand, so he says: 'Of course they did!'

Nimueh laughs. 'Of course not,' she says. 'They're creatures of the old magic. They wouldn't dare defy destiny.'

'What are you saying?' he asks, glancing back and forth between her and the two nymphs. They've been hurt by the hard rock and burnt by the winds. He struggles not to incapacitate Nimueh and free them at once.

'They lied to you, Merlin. They know how to reach the Isle of Avalon and now, they will tell me the truth.'

'Why?'

'I'll make them, of course,' she says, and whispers something that makes the nymphs twist in pain.

'Stop that,' Merlin tells her. He doesn't want to use his magic against anyone. He wants this to end with words alone. 'No. I meant, why on earth would you—You're not,' he pauses, not knowing how to put it. 'You're not still planning on ruling the world, are you?'

Nimueh looks as if she's been struck. She steps back, regarding him. 'Don't you want Arthur found?' she finally asks. 'For over a thousand years, that's all you've ever wanted.'

'I wish you'd release them,' he says, motioning toward the nymphs across the inlet. 'I don't care if they lied. It's not right to treat them like this. They're one of us, Nimueh.'

'Answer my question, Merlin,' she says. 'Don't you want Arthur found?'

He looks at the struggling nymphs, feeling discomfited. Centuries have gone by since he last saw them by the Fountain of Thirst, desperate and eager for their help. He doesn't need their help anymore, and neither does Nimueh, but he can't bear to tell her that. 'What's a few more years,' he replies.

'When?'

'Whenever,' he says.

She stares at him, clearly unimpressed.

'When the time comes,' he amends.

'No,' she snaps, shoulders tightening. 'When? When did you find him, Merlin?'

'What?'

'Don't insult me, Merlin,' she shouts. 'I know you. I've known you for far too long.' He can't bring himself to disagree. She does know him, and he's held on to that since the passing of their age and the life he can never have again. 'All these years, you've known where to find him and you didn't bring him back,' she says. 'Why?'

'You said it yourself. I'd be bringing the apocalypse on all of us, wouldn't I?'

'When has that ever mattered to you?'

'Have you ever considered that I've changed?' he asks her. This is the first time they've met in the closing century so there's quite a bit of ground, he thinks, to argue on. 'You know, I've lived through everything you've lived through,' he says. 'Well, all right, not entirely. But I've lived through a lot.'

She looks as if she's about to spit into his face. 'And yet you're not eager to tell Arthur all about your adventures.'

'There's—'

'Of course not,' she says, sounding so bitter he can hardly look at her. 'You coward.'

She disappears with a gust of air that hits him flat across the chest. He crouches down in pain and sees the nymphs falling clear into the waters below. They don't seem grateful, but his eyes are smarting and it's not like he's done anything anyway.

  


  
*  


  


  


  


He is making tea, eyes still knotted in sleep, when the body of a camera swings over the hissing kettle. A masculine shoulder follows, grazing his face before brushing against his parted lips, outerwear rough and full of the outdoors. The taste creates an unwelcome jolt of memories and he steps back with taut fingers, spelling his breakfast to deal with itself.

It's a dark morning in midwinter and the abbey ruins should be eerie enough to cause dread, but the stranger only walks away, dismissing the brush-by with a shake of the head. Merlin watches him go, waves a hand to check the crystalline structure of his home, and leads the dance of hot earl grey and porridge into his living room.

With the choppy sea and the few locals hardly welcoming, Merlin wonders what has brought the young man from the mainland. In the winter months, mist hides much of the light and most of everything else. He should know. It's one of the reasons why he chooses to spend his days on Bardsey.

He sits in his armchair to eat his morning meal, the bowl of porridge hovering impatiently in the air, but memories trail back through the taste of the outdoors and the warmth of his drink. The heat mingles in a revel with the smell of undergrowth, soft earth, and an open fire. Arthur is lying on his side, one hand propping up his blonde head, smiling.

Merlin wants to smile in return – to lie on the ground so they are elbow to elbow, so Arthur can't stop himself from scooting up and falling into a kiss – but he doesn't. Merlin knows where he really is, and lest he forgets himself, he has sworn to let Arthur rest in Avalon.

In the summers, along with the pilgrims and tourists who force him to retreat to the upper levels of his home before he tires of the whole thing around August and leaves, there is always a knock on the door. Nimueh visits the island only when it's at its busiest, if only to see him acknowledge the nuisance, if only to point it out to him without having to say: the idyll is just an illusion.

Sometimes, when he can smile at her persistence, he invites her inside and they remember the days of old, washing skin against skin, mouth against mouth, though not before she conjures a blazing torrent that sends everyone outside scurrying for cover down to the village at the bottom of the hill.

'Why do you do that?' He asks, kissing her breast, trying to unhook her bra, a little exasperated.

'I find no pleasure unless there's misery everywhere.'

He laughs, hears her breath hitch, and looks up, reaching to caress the nape of her neck. 'You should be with someone who would find this miserable then.'

'Don't you?'

'Are you being serious?'

She kisses him, her hands stroking his back as if brushing away the dust of time, and he thinks, yes, they could be all right.

But the inevitable always comes. She sits on the bed, muscled legs still damp from sex, to say, 'If Arthur were here, you wouldn't be hiding from the world. You would be nauseatingly ridiculous and impossible, but at least you'd be alive.'

'You're here,' he smiles, trying to capture her hand. 'That's enough for me.'

She glares at him, but her voice is level when she says, 'You, like this, are not enough for me.'

  


*  


  


  


  


  


He is a creature of habit. At the start of autumn, he gets himself down to the shops in London to pick out a new book or two. He hasn't found one as wondrous as the book of magic that Gaius gave him when he arrived in Camelot, but he thinks it's only because he's a warlock and not a cyber parliamentarian or a financial engineer.

He walks his way up to get to Foyles, passing St Martin-in-the-Fields and Molly Moggs to weave through the midday masses who all seem too slow for such a hopeful day. When he strides across the mouth of Phoenix Street, Nimueh steps out of an idling car as if she has been waiting for him. The wet pavement is metallic against the scarlet of her shoes.

'Pax Americana has come to an end, Merlin.'

'Pity,' he tells her, and resumes walking down Charing Cross Road.

'It's time,' she calls to him, but Merlin doesn't look back.

The world always sorts itself out. They sky will not fall down. There is no reason for anyone to worry. There is no reason for Arthur to concern himself with human trivialities.

  


  


*  


  


  


  


  


The island idyll is no longer an illusion, but the thought brings him no joy. The would-be pilgrims are all in hiding and there are no more tourists, no more guides. The whole world seems to be waiting in their respective corners, fraught and afraid.

After his recent run-in with Nimueh, the knock on the door shouldn't come as a surprise, but he loses another good teacup and the others on the kitchen shelf crack in solidarity.

'I've found the shores of Avalon,' she tells him without fanfare. 'At Samhain, you will wake Arthur from his slumber or I will set destiny aside and do it myself. And then we shall see.'

His heart is beating against his ears, but he says nothing; he does not wait before closing the door on her expectant face. A week later, he is in her garden, waiting under the flowering dogwoods for the lights to come on inside the house, for the price of centuries yet to be paid.

  


  
~  



End file.
